'India, Canada N-deal win-win for both'

Canada should quickly ratify the landmark nuclear deal with India as it will bring more prosperity and cleaner energy to it and also help Ottawa to become 'clean energy superpower', a leading Canadian newspaper commented today.

"The deal is an opportunity for Canada," the Globe and Mail said in its editorial on the nuclear deal signed between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Canadian counterpart Stephen Harper, 36 years after Ottawa slapped sanctions on India after it exploded an atomic device.

"India is not and should not be treated as a pariah state over its nuclear programme. It has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but it has also promised to never launch nuclear weapons first against an enemy," it said.

A new nuclear deal signed between Canada and India is a long-awaited and welcome development and if it can be ratified quickly, and if it leads to real Canadian nuclear exports to India, it will bring more prosperity and cleaner energy to India, and will help make Canada the clean energy superpower of Stephen Harper's aspirations, it said.

India is also an assured and pluralistic democracy. Indeed, with this agreement Canada has the opportunity to be more forceful in urging India to join the NPT's ranks, the paper said.

"If Canada aspires to be a clean energy superpower, it needs to be a bigger exporter, and India should be on the top of the list," the paper added.

As of 2006, 70 per cent of its domestic electricity was from coal, with only 2 per cent coming from nuclear power.

If Canada succeeds, then supplying India with cleaner electricity helps to bridge the gap between developed and developing countries on the question of who should pay to alleviate climate change, the paper added.

"Canada has advantages – a reliable uranium supply, a large diaspora supportive of greater ties – that these competitors lack," it said while noting that the country will face competition from the US, Russia and France.

The Indo-Canadian June 28 nuclear agreement also paves the way for supply of uranium and cooperation in research, development and radiation safety.